Kinetic Theory of Excess Electrons in Polyatomic Gases, Liquids, and Solids

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Abstract
The Cohen-Lekner kinetic theory of electron transport in simple systems is extended to polyatomic systems. The single-scatterer approximation is used to construct differential scattering cross sections for electron-molecule scattering in which the dependence on certain internal parameters such as molecular orientations and conformations, which vary with periods short compared to the duration of an electron-molecule collision, is accounted for by a fixed-internal-coordinates approximation. The resulting differential cross section, unlike the case treated by Cohen and Lekner, does not factor into a product of the electron-single-scatterer cross section and the Van Hove spectral function. The most important consequence of the internal parameters of the scattering molecules is the appearance of an incoherent scattering effect. Such an effect can be very important in liquids and solids where, because of intermolecular order, the coherent part of the cross section may be very small. Boltzmann's equation for electrons moving in a constant electric field is derived, solved formally for arbitrary field strength, and solved explicitly for a low-field limit.

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